Taking All Comers

In 1996,
Massachusetts passed an earlier set of reformscommunity rating
and guaranteed issuethat required insurers to take all comers,
and to sell plans to individuals at the same price, regardless of
their individual health status.

For pretty obvious reasons, those sorts of reforms drive up
premium prices tremendously. In New York, for example, similar
reforms have driven up individual insurance premiums enough that
the Manhattan
Institute estimates that premium prices would drop 42 percent
if they were repealed. And going back to AHIP's reports, sure
enough, New York and Massachusetts are the states with the two
most expensive individual market premiums.

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